It's the biggest story in Country music in 2024. How a song recorded in 2019 is now a Top 10 hit at radio and threatening to go even higher in the weeks to come. ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' by Drew Baldridge, an independent artist, has been an absolute phenomena this year in terms of shaking up expectations in the industry and highlighting the power of social media and one man's determination to persevere against tumultuous odds. We were thrilled to talk to Drew all about it and get his fascinating insight into the whole thing.
We reviewed Drew's ‘Country Born' album back in 2022 – how prescient was our reviewer about ‘She's Somebody's Daughter'??!! Review right here.
Drew, thank you for your time today, you must be so busy right now! Let's start by congratulating you on the success of ‘She's Somebody's Daughter.' It's sitting at 9 in the charts right now!!
It is, yeah, it's crazy man, it's been such a wild story and wild journey! I can't believe we're in the freakin' top 10 right now, I'm gonna be honest with you! (laughing)
Without wanting to jinx things, are you sensing momentum is still with you? Could it go even higher? Top 5 maybe?
Yep! Things feel really good right now. Every week we are getting more conversions and seeing stations want to be a part of what we are doing. Over the next month I could see us breaking into that top 5. Next week we'll hopefully be at number 8 or even number 7 and we'll keep on climbing.
I think we could even think about hitting that number one slot, man!!
It would be the first independently funded song to reach number one, wouldn't it?
I would be the first artist, in the history of Country music, to self-fund their first number one! Can you believe that? That's a lot for me to think about and we have a real chance to pull this off.
What does life look like for you right now compared to, say, this time last year?
Man, it's wild. This time last year I was running around Nashville, trying to get a record deal and nobody was interested. I was having meetings with people who were saying the numbers were great and then I just wouldn't hear anything from them.
I had a record deal back from 2016 to 2019 and then that company shut its doors. I thought that I'd get a new deal somewhere else really easily but that didn't turn out to be the case. I don't know why or what happened but from 2020 onwards I just started posting on social media and playing back yards and garden shows anywhere in the USA that would have me! (laughing) We did over 300 shows in people's back yards and that changed me as an artist – I stopped making music for Nashville, for label heads or for the radio and started making music for people to have some fun and make some memories in their back yards!
This time last year I was a little frustrated about why no-one was interested in signing me and then I started thinking a little deeper and coming at it from a different perspective. I just realised that without a label, these days, all you need to do is figure out the radio aspect and you can pretty much do everything else by yourself. If I could figure out the radio part, I figured that would change my life.
I'm not sitting here trashing labels and I would love to have a record deal if someone would talk to me about it or offer me one but that just hasn't been the case for me.
So how do you figure out radio then when, seemingly no-one has without a record deal has managed to do it?
I started calling up radio friends and telling them about ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' which had been streaming like crazy. At that time it had had 400-500 million plays on TikTok, it was burning on the streaming platforms. I was asking them who would be a good team to hire to take the song to radio and people were, like, ‘Hire this guy, hire that guy,' so I did!!
I put a team together and we sent the song to radio on August 23rd and here we are a year later in the top 10.
You wrote that song and released it in 2019 right at the end of your time with Cold River Records. There was a wedding version a couple of years later but where has all the interested and demand for it come from since?
2019 we put this song out and I wanted it to be the single when I was still at Cold River. I get in my car after recording it and pulled up the Country Aircheck charts to see what else was out there going to radio and there was this artist called Tenille Townes who was sending her song ‘Somebody's Daughter' to radio – I was, like, ‘You've got to be freakin' kidding me!'
So I decided we couldn't do anything with it really so we released it and it just sat there. In 2021 my wife and I got married and I made a wedding version of the song so that she could dance to it with her dad as it was her favourite song of mine. We went on our honeymoon and I posted on TikTok on the Wednesday night that if I got 3,000 likes I would put the song out on Friday so that other people could maybe use it for their weddings. I knew it was already coming out Friday, I was just hoping to get a few likes with it, right? (laughing) I woke up the next morning and the video had almost 10 million views!!!!!
The song came out and it was Top 25 on Spotify, number 7 in Norway, it was trending in the UK and in South Africa! It was all over the world. I was convinced, then, at that point that I would start to get calls from record labels wanting to be involved but the only labels that called were based in L.A. and then when we went through to the Nashville offices we never heard anything from them again but it was that moment, that TikTok, that got the ball rolling.
That's still three years ago though!
There was another TikTok a few days later that a girl did highlighting the nature of the lyrics and asking boys to treat women right. She acted out all the lyrics in the video and she made the chorus about her dad – I watched it and it brought me to tears. It got millions of views and then I dueted it with her. Girls all over the world started doing it to the point where it even got its own name, ‘The Daughters Trend.' Crazy. France. Mexico. All around the world.
The song touched so many people but then a couple of months later one girl dueted it with her Dad watching – he was crying – and that gave the song another boost as girls all over the world filmed their dad's reactions to the song too!! The power of social media amazed me and it really made the song be what it has turned out to be. It's the song that never wanted to give up! How awesome is it that the first song that I ever have go Top 10 is a song urging people to treat women right, I'm so proud of that.
I didn't move to Nashville to become a millionaire, I moved here to get my music heard and to move people's hearts.
People refer to Nashville as a ten year town. You are in year 13 now. What advice would you give to aspiring writers and performers about to make that same move?
I would have different advice for writers than I would have for artists. Writers have to be in Nashville, that's the big thing. You can't just sit at home in your bedroom, write some lyrics and think that they are going to find their way to the artists here in town. You've gotta be in Nashville, you've gotta create friendships and a network. Look at somebody like Lainey Wilson – she was my first friend in Nashville and we played songwriters nights together in town for years. You've got to find your team and your crowd and you can't do that at home. Surround yourself with people you think are great and that you want to work and co-write with and be patient! (laughing)
For artists I would have totally different advice. I would say just start posting on your socials like crazy. You don't have to be in Nashville right away – you need to write some songs, build an audience and create content to begin with. You'd need to be in Nashville at some point because this is where the writers that are going to make you better are but a lot of people like Bailey Zimmerman and Warren Zeiders didn't start off in Nashville at first. Build an audience first and foremost and post, post, post.
I can imagine you are now in a position where the world and ‘his daughter' are asking you for advice on creativity and on the business side of things too – you must have become sought after, like some sort of industry guru!?
Yeah, it's pretty wild. Even smaller record labels have called me and asked for advice on what to do with their artists and how to get them up the charts! (laughing) At the end of the day, we have a song that's working and that's the key thing – what's worked for us might not work for someone else in the same way.
I love helping people out though and I've had so many artists asking me to walk them through what we've been doing and how we've been doing it and I'm, like, ‘Freaking right I will, c'mon!' (laughing) There are too many artists here in Nashville that have a had a song, signed a record deal, gone out and done the radio tour and then been let go because that song didn't do as well as the label wanted it to do. They get dropped and I understand the label side because I've figured out how much money goes into that but at the end of the day there is a person there who believes in what they are doing and wants to try and make a career out of what they excel at. It's great to help them navigate their business as it is now by showing them what I've been able to do with mine.
You have to be the head of your own record label and figure out all the hard stuff like distribution systems & release schedules. You can't just do what you want when you want and that's hard for independent artists to understand. I had to learn it and make mistakes along the way.
Talking about your music – you've got music on Spotify dating back to ‘BYOB' in 2013. When was the last time you played that song and how have you grown and evolved as a writer since then?
(laughing) That's funny. It was one of the first songs we ever put out. The video was shot in the field behind my house! We brought my hometown to a standstill with all the trucks trying to get in and out of that field! I really wasn't a big party guy growing up and it hit me going out to play that song live that it wasn't really who I was. I realised that I have to think carefully about what songs I wanted to put out that represented who I was because if a song blows up and becomes a hit you have to play that song for the rest of your career, right? This is what people are also going to expect from you for the rest of your career – I guess that is how I have evolved as a writer, that you have to think about who you are and how you want to be perceived as an artist.
There's another song I have, ‘Dance With You.' That's a really fun song with horns on it and it has great energy but it's not necessarily who I am or who I wanted to be perceived as being to a wider crowd. I feel like the music we have been creating over the last five years or so, since I left the label, is much more authentic and really just more ‘me.' From 2019 you are going to hear music that is much more reflective of who I am.
So, what's next after the ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' rollercoaster?
We're working on a project right now that will, hopefully, come out in the fall. Of course, every artist says this, but I think it is our best music yet. I'm really excited about it. I feel like we can branch off ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' and show people lots of different sides and colours of who I am. I don't want to be known as the ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' guy for the rest of my career – I have a lot of other things to say and sing about too.
Do you feel a pressure in choosing the follow up single to ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' in terms of trying to replicate that success or are you just going to enjoy the ride?
I feel lots of pressure! (laughing) We have our team but I still don't have a manager. I have been meeting with managers recently and every one of them asks the question ‘So, what's next?' I want to win again. I don't want to be a one hit wonder, right? I hold a lot of pressure over myself because of that. One of the biggest problems I have right now is finding time to get the new music finished because I am so busy with the business side of what we are trying to achieve with ‘She's Somebody's Daughter.' I played 11 shows in 13 days in the last two weeks trying to promote myself and the song and that takes its toll on your voice – I recorded five songs a month ago but I haven't got to sing them or refine them in the studio because I had to leave the next day and go out on the road.
There's a lot of behind the scenes that play into why there hasn't been any new music from me in a while but there will be soon! When I'm not on the road I need to rest my voice and I've been promoting ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' constantly to the industry too. It's been a wild year so far. I have some new songs I am very excited about and I've been thinking very carefully about what the next song should say and the tone it should take – it's going to be hard for me to just put out a ‘Country back roads' type of song, right? I've got to watch what I say and do in the next song, I can't just put out ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' and then release a hook up song next! (laughing)
Check out Drew Baldridge's ‘She's Somebody's Daughter' on all the usual platforms right now and let's see if we can't help this terrific artists achieve something that's never been done before!
